Pedro Faria Gomes (1979 - )

Pedro Faria Gomes was born in 1979 in Lisbon. He studied at the Academia de Música de Santa Cecília (AMSC), the Escola Superior de Música de Lisboa and the Royal College of Music in London, where he was awarded both masters and doctoral degrees in composition. He studied piano with Leonor Fernandes and composition with João Madureira, Eurico Carrapatoso, David Sawer, Kenneth Hesketh and Mark-Anthony Turnage. He taught composition and analysis at the Instituto Piaget de Almada, the Orquestra Metropolitana de Lisboa Conservatoire and the AMSC. Invited by Bright Sheng, he was in 2011-12 composer-in-residence at the Hong Kong University of Science and Technology, as well as professor of composition and music theory. In the United Kingdom, where he is based since 2007, his music has been performed at the Wigmore Hall, Southbank Centre, Cadogan Hall, St. Martin-in-the-Fields, Philharmonia Orchestra’s Infernal Dance festival, Oxford Playhouse, Royal Opera House VOX and London Symphony Orchestra Soundhub, with which he has been an Associate Composer since 2012.

Recent works have been commissioned in the USA (Memória, CD in 2016), Europe (Portuguese National Ballet in 2016) and Asia (Dual, Intimacy of Creativity 2012 at the Hong Kong City Hall Theatre). Performers have included the BBC Singers, the London Chamber Orchestra, Bournemouth Symphony Orchestra, I Solisti Veneti, Portuguese orchestras Gulbenkian, Sinfónica do Porto Casa da Música, Metropolitana de Lisboa, Fundação Orquestra Estúdio, do Norte, do Algarve, Clássica da Madeira and Sinfonietta de Lisboa, as well as the ensembles Contemporary Consort, Composers Ensemble, Camerata Pacifica, Eidos Trio and soloists such as Richard Stoltzman and Anne Kaasa. Recordings of his music are available on Naxos, Casa da Música, Numérica, GDA and Compasso.

Pedro Faria Gomes has received several prizes, including the PRS Sir Arthur Bliss Memorial Award in Composition in the UK and the Lopes-Graça Prize in Portugal. He has also received grants from the Fundação para a Ciência e a Tecnologia, the Royal Musical Association and the Royal College of Music in London.